The Ada Decades

by Paula Martinac

  “He drinks at work?”

  “Oh, they all do. Occupational hazard.”

  Her father finally answered and Cam held out the receiver so Ada could hear his booming voice. “Darlin’!” he said. Then she pressed it back to her ear and listened, a smile creasing her face.

  “Maybe Ada and I should come to you. I’m sure she’d like to see your office. . . . Oh, all right, Daddy.” The frown that had just started on Cam’s face deepened. “We’ll see you in two shakes.”

  Cam explained that her daddy’s two shakes always ended up being more like an hour, and she couldn’t bear the thought of spending all that time with her mother. She made their excuses to Daisy and said they needed to unpack. “Mama dresses for dinner,” she said on the way up the staircase. “It’s that Savannah thing. I’m just going to throw on a skirt instead of these old slacks, but you look absolutely wonderful. As always.” Ada didn’t have a well-stocked closet, but she was proud of the fact that the dresses and skirts she did own were nicely made and complimented her figure. Her black wool sheath was new this year, bought on layaway at Belk’s and paid for in three installments.

  “Flattery will get you everywhere,” Ada said with a coy tug at her new pearls, an early present from Cam. In the time they’d been dating, Ada felt more at ease with flirting, something she had been clumsy about in the past. Cam just seemed to bring out the coquette in her. Ada’s words had the desired effect: Cam cast a glance downstairs to the foyer and, when the coast looked clear, pecked her on the mouth.

  “Cam!” she said, pretending outrage but feeling excited.

  “Come here.” Cam took her by the hand and led her into one of the bedrooms, giving the door a light kick to close it. She pushed Ada against the wall and kissed her, hard and insistent. “I have been wanting to do that ever since I picked you up and saw you in those pearls. I would love to see you wearing nothing but.”

  “Should we be doing this here?” Ada asked between kisses that threatened to rub her lips raw. They had so few private moments; she tended to fret about what her mother would think if she were at Cam’s apartment too often or too long. But she was twenty-five and in love and craved more moments exactly like this one.

  “Absolutely,” Cam said, tracing Ada’s neck with her lips.

  “Cam, we shouldn’t.” But at the same time, she let her tongue find Cam’s and didn’t pull away when a hand made its way to her breast. Ada closed her eyes and made a little animal-like noise that Cam seemed to coax out of her, halfway between a moan and a gasp. She felt almost dizzy with the pure joy of it.

  Then with horror, Ada heard the distinctive squeak of a door opening and clicking closed again, and her eyes popped with fear, her nails digging into Cam’s forearm to stop her.

  “Cam! Somebody just opened the door! Oh, I told you this wasn’t a good idea!”

  “Let’s hope it was Mattie,” Cam said. “She pretends she doesn’t see half of what goes on around here.”

  Cam entered the hallway, but left the door slightly ajar. Ada heard a high, girlish voice, probably Cam’s younger sister. Lily had sent Cam a recent photo in which she looked like a blonde Jackie Kennedy in her pillbox hat and two-piece suit. In her arms, she held a chunky, solid-looking baby. “His legs look like sausages,” Cam had remarked, claiming she couldn’t even remember the child’s name.

  “Lil . . .” Ada heard her say.

  “Don’t think I won’t tell them,” Lily said. “You think I’ll go on keeping your little secret, but this is just too much. In their own house, Cam!”

  “It’s not what you think . . .” Cam began, but it was a weak rebuttal. Because it was exactly what Lily thought, what anyone would have thought if they’d stumbled onto two women in an open-mouth kiss. Lily must have found Cam’s words ridiculous, because the next thing Ada heard was the click of high heels, a baby’s gurgles trailing off.

  Back inside the bedroom, Cam’s face had lost its usual ruddiness. “You should have seen the look she gave me.”

  “We should leave.”

  “Why don’t you just wait in the guest room for a little?” Cam suggested. “I’ll see what I can do to fix this.”

  “Cam, there’s nothing to fix. What’s done is done. I want to leave.”

  “Not yet.”

  There was no way she was going to be able to look at Cam’s parents after this, no way she could see the revulsion on Lily’s face firsthand. If Cam wouldn’t consent to leave, she would take Auggie up on his offer. “You can stay then, but I think I might call Auggie. He said he’d pick me up if I needed him to.”

  Cam’s eyebrows lifted. “You didn’t tell me you arranged something with Auggie.”

  “I’m sorry. I was nervous about meeting your folks.”

  Cam got a Lucky out of her coat pocket and looked like she was going to light it, but instead stuck it behind her ear. “Look, Ada Jane, I think we should live together.”

  Ada started at the non sequitur. “Why on earth would you say that now?”

  “We act like horny teenagers the minute we’re behind closed doors,” Cam said. “But we’re adults, for God’s sake. Adults kiss and make love in their own homes, whenever they want to.”

  “We’re not like most adults, Cam,” Ada said.

  “So we’re stuck with . . . this? We’ve been sneaking around for almost two years, and this is where it’s brought us.”

  Ada sighed and adjusted her dress, which felt like it had gotten twisted during their embrace. “Living together is a big step,” she said, brushing past Cam into the hall.

  Cam

  Cam didn’t go downstairs immediately. Instead, she stood at the top of the stairs, like a girl eavesdropping on her parents, listening for the voices below. Everything was too quiet, too calm. Beads of sweat rose at her hairline, even though the air in the hallway was nippy. She finally heard her father come home and call out, “Cam darlin’, where are you?” before Samuel’s soft voice steered him into the parlor.

  Cam leaned on the banister and waited for an explosion. She didn’t think of herself as timid. At work, she spoke up at faculty meetings, challenged the principal when she could, tried to be an advocate for the children. She’d attended more rallies and marches for the civil rights of Negroes than she could count. But at her parents’ home, she was a coward, just like her father, who snuck off to his office and pulled a bottle from his bottom drawer. She’d never understood his absence, his seeming discomfort in his own home, but she’d come to think of it as the way of married men.

  The door to the parlor opened and closed with a soft click, but she couldn’t see who emerged. It might have been Samuel or Mattie, but the footsteps sounded too light for either. As the sunlight began to shift and fade, she thought maybe she should just escape back to the city with Ada, walk right out the front door. But her feet wouldn’t take her anywhere, not even down the stairs. She lit the cigarette she’d stuck behind her ear, even though her mother forbade smoking in the house. As a distraction, she tried to recall the names of the books on the shelves in her daddy’s office, and which order they were in. He had a compulsive habit of alphabetizing them by author. “Agee, A Death in the Family,” she said aloud, between puffs. “Anderson, Winesburg, Ohio.”

  “Miss Cam.” Mattie’s voice was behind her, at the top of the service stairs. Cam turned toward her sturdy outline, but it was too dusky to make out the look on her face.

  “Mattie!” She spun around, guilty about being caught with the cigarette. “Sorry about this smoke. I will get rid of it right now.” But there was nowhere to stub it out, so she winced and bore the pain of extinguishing it with her fingertips.

  The housekeeper’s eyes were cast down. “Your daddy’s wanting you downstairs. I got no idea what this is all about, but I do know dinner’s going to be late for sure.”

  “I’m sorry, Mattie. I’m sure you worked hard on it.”

  She was close enough now to see lines creasing Mattie’s forehead. “My Deborah’s coming i
n from Greensboro tonight,” the housekeeper said. “Samuel’s supposed to pick her up in an hour at the station.”

  How many times, Cam wondered, had this happened to Mattie? White folks had arguments or got into sticky situations, and expected Mattie’s life to go into a holding pattern.

  “Maybe we could just go ahead and eat,” Cam suggested. “I’ll talk to mama. There’s no reason to delay you and Samuel because of our foolishness.”

  “That would be a right uncomfortable dinner,” Mattie said. “No way is your mama going to agree to that. You go on now. They’re in the parlor.” And then she turned and hastened back down the service stairs.

  Cam knocked on Ada’s door before answering her parents’ summons. Ada was seated in a blue chintz chair with a standing lamp shining onto the book open in her lap. “Can we leave?” she asked. Her face looked pink and strained, as if she’d been crying. “Is it over?”

  “It’s just starting,” Cam said. “But please don’t call Auggie. Give me more time.”

  § § §

  Samuel or Mattie had removed the milk punch and canapés from the parlor. Cam’s mother wasn’t drinking anything, and her father had a glass of straight bourbon that he finished and quickly refilled. Lily and the baby had disappeared, probably to her father’s study. No one offered her anything, not even a seat.

  “I’m afraid we won’t be having dinner after all,” Daisy said. She pulled a handkerchief out of the sleeve of her sweater and blew her nose daintily. “Your father would like to talk to you, Camellia.” Then, to her husband: “I’ll be with Lily.”

  When her mother withdrew, Cam sank heavily onto one of the chairs. She could see her father pouring himself a third round. When he finally turned to face her, his eyes glanced off her face and toward the fireplace. The flames were no longer perfect; the logs would need stoking or replenishing soon, or the room would take on a chill.

  “I know a doctor,” her father said, strained and out of nowhere. The words appeared to cost him more than he wanted to pay.

  “I don’t . . .”

  “A very good doctor. Here in Davidson. Your mother and I will pay for it, of course. We thought you might even come home for a while. To stay. Get a leave from school.”

  “I don’t need a doctor, Daddy.”

  “I beg to differ,” he said, meeting her eyes. Sometimes, especially when she hadn’t seen him in a while, Cam found it disconcerting how much she looked like him—the same square jaw, the sandy wave of hair, the hazel eyes with flecks of gold. When she was growing up, friends of the family remarked that it was almost as if Daisy had nothing to do with Cam’s birth at all, as if she’d sprung from her father’s head like Athena.

  “What I meant was I don’t want a doctor,” she corrected. “I’ve known about myself since I was little.” That wasn’t something she’d verbalized before, not even to Ada or any of her gay friends, and it felt freeing to say it right out loud. Being that way was part of her fabric, a differently colored thread seen by anyone who chose to, but which most people’s eyes would just skim over. “I don’t see what a doctor would do about it anyway.”

  He sat across from her on the sofa and examined his drink, its level again low. She thought she should offer to replenish it so she could help herself to one; she needed it so badly, she could almost taste it warming her throat. But the silence in the room didn’t last long.

  “You’d be amazed,” he said, as if he had personal experience with psychiatry. What her father said next set the room to spinning. “You know, I had . . . inclinations. When I was a graduate student, before your mother and I married.”

  Cam wasn’t sure where to look, so she focused on her hands, which she realized were gripping the arms of the chair. “I saw a doctor, and things got better,” he continued. “If I hadn’t done that . . . well, there’s no telling what would have happened. Now I’m not saying you’ll change. I’m just saying you’ll be able to have a normal life. A family. A home.” He waved his glass in a small circle, indicating the grand parlor that he went to such great pains to avoid. “Of course, you’re an adult, and I can’t force you to do anything. But there could be . . . consequences.” The way he lowered his voice, almost as if consequences were as dirty a word as queer, made her think he was talking about money. Her parents subsidized the rent that would have been a stretch on a teacher’s salary.

  Her father was now a dizzy blur to her. She wanted to stand up and leave the room, she badly needed to see Ada, but she was afraid of falling over, of not even making it as far as the door.

  “I have been able to show enormous self-restraint over the years, and all thanks to the doctor. I am proud to say I have been faithful to your mother.”

  “Faithful,” Cam repeated, numbly.

  “Yes, faithful. I have held up my end of our agreement.” The words sounded so formal, like marriage was no more than a signed contract. Her father stared at his empty glass. “Where is your friend?” he asked suddenly.

  “Upstairs in the guest room. Her name is Ada. She wants to leave. In fact, if I don’t go to her within the next few minutes, she just might call a friend of ours to come pick her up.”

  He stood and walked to the bar cart, splashing more amber into his glass. “Another strong-willed girl. Well, you can’t leave on Christmas Eve,” he said. “I’ve . . .” He stopped, as if weighing his emotions on a scale. “I always look forward to seeing you, Cammie.”

  Cam felt a sharp jab in her gut. No one called her that but him, and he hadn’t done so in many years. She remembered what Ada had observed the first time she visited her apartment: “You have a lot of photos of your father.” Cam had denied it at first, then laughed and acknowledged that she did indeed. He had been everything to her, but now? To think that he actually understood her feelings, had felt them himself, but expected her to extinguish all passion from her life. It was like he had a grip on her innards and was twisting them this way and that.

  “I’m leaving, Daddy,” she said, standing up.

  He nodded, making no attempt to stop her and not bothering to repeat the offer about the psychiatrist. She suspected her father would drink himself into unconsciousness that night, then stagger into his study and fall asleep in a chair. He’d done it many times when she lived at home. Tomorrow, he wouldn’t remember much of what he’d said, but a vague sense of unpleasantness would linger in his mind.

  Ada

  Ada couldn’t wait in the guest room any longer. She had tried to read, but she ended up counting the thin stripes in the wallpaper over and over. Finally, she hauled her suitcase into the hallway and listened from the landing to the peculiar stillness of the house. The French doors to the parlor were flung open, but she couldn’t hear any voices, so she assumed that whatever had taken place between Cam and her parents was over. She hoped Cam hadn’t been so rattled that she’d sped off without her.

  With her coat on and suitcase in hand, Ada stole down the staircase. The study door was closed, shutting off the possibility of using the phone in there to call Auggie. She reasoned that in such a big house there might be another phone in the kitchen, and she turned in the direction she imagined that room would be—toward the back, tucked out of sight. But as she did, an oversized man she recognized from Cam’s photos emerged from the parlor. She had startled him, and he almost dropped a full glass of bourbon.

  “Oh!” Ada said. “I was looking for the kitchen.” She tried to steady her voice by enunciating each word.

  “You must be Ada,” he said in a melodious baritone, a speaking voice that Cam said helped make him popular with students. “That’s right, isn’t it? Ada?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “I’m T.J. Lively.” He proffered his free hand, but Ada just nodded as she continued to grip her suitcase and her purse. “Well, you know that already,” he said, tucking the hand back into his jacket pocket. He couldn’t be too angry if he was trying to shake her hand, but Ada wanted nothing more than to disappear into the wallpaper.
/>   “Well,” he repeated, motioning roughly with his glass so some bourbon spilled onto the foyer floor. “The kitchen is that-a-way.”

  “Do you . . . know . . . where Cam is?”

  A door clicked open behind her and Cam appeared from the study, looking as washed-out as a ghost. “I’m here,” she said. “Just let me get my bag.”

  When Cam barreled up the stairs, T.J. bent over and mopped up the drops of liquor he’d spilled with his handkerchief. He went over the spot twice, even though he seemed to get the splatter with the first swipe. “That was an accident waiting to happen,” he announced when he finished, with a feeble smile that suggested Ada was his accomplice. For several moments they both stood frozen in place, like mannequins in a store window. Then Cam was at her side, saying in a hoarse voice, “Let’s go,” and they left without another word.

  “Aren’t you going to tell me what happened?” Ada asked as Cam loaded the trunk.

  “On the ride home,” Cam said, her emphasis falling on the final word. It was hard not to notice, because since Ada had known her, she’d been in the habit of calling her parents’ house home.

  Cam didn’t bother to warm up the car, but instead pulled away while Ada’s breaths were still moist clouds. When she finally spoke, the darkness of her tone scared Ada, like the times she went one drink too far, beyond her happy stage and into a black funk.

  “So I’ll tell you this, and then I don’t really want to talk about it anymore,” Cam said. “Daddy and Mama want me to be ‘fixed’ by a doctor. I said no. He said he’s been through it and it worked wonders.”

  Ada blinked hard a few times. The news was too dramatic to let ride between them like a silent third party. “What on earth do you mean, he’s been through it?”

  “Seems he’s queer as a two-dollar bill.”

  Ada tried to absorb that, how Cam’s father could be married and a homosexual at the same time. They had two children. “I just can’t believe that,” she said.

  “And why would I lie?” Cam’s tone turned sour, and Ada watched her hands tighten on the steering wheel. She didn’t want to fight on Christmas Eve, but Cam seemed more than ready for it.